Shared services

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are already co-operating in many areas to achieve significant savings and improvements in performance by sharing services.

Current examples of this co-operation include UCAS, the Joint Information Systems Committee, and the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

These collaborations can take many forms of sharing and partnering arrangements and can improve the quality and cost effectiveness of higher education (HE). They can be provided by the commercial sector, by an individual institution for its own benefit and others', or through sector-based shared services.

Our approach

Our initial approach to developing shared services throughout the sector was to identify and fund areas of shared service activity through our Procurement and Shared Services budget.

We invited views and funded a series of feasibility studies. We have subsequently identified partner institutions and funded pilot projects.

We have also worked to address the impact of Value Added Tax (VAT) on the development of shared services.

Research into shared services

We have also funded research in this area:

Shared services in the higher education sector

In July 2006 we published a report by KPMG which detailed the extensive range of existing shared services in higher education, many of which have operated for some time.